“I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeye’s organization” in Baltimore, [Ben Carson] told Karen Hunter on Sirius XM Radio, referring to the fried chicken fast-food chain. “Guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs. And I just said, ‘I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.'”

Doubt the guy behind the counter is going to be voting for the good doctor.

WILKESBORO, N.C., Nov. 14 (UPI) — Police in North Carolina said they are searching for a man whose gun accidentally fired during a conversation about the Second Amendment at a store.

Wilkesboro police said the unidentified man was engaged in a discussion about the Second Amendment and gun rights at the GNC store Tuesday evening when he took out his gun to show an employee and accidentally fired off a round into a printer, WFMY-TV, Greensboro, reported Thursday.

The employee told police the man said he “could not go down for this” and fled the store.

Notice how the “gun accidentally fired,” rather than the man who accidentally fired the gun. No harm done, then.
~~~

Okay, yeah, comments (often a cesspool, not representative, blah blah), but this sentiment is so commonly expressed in the comments that someone less obsessed with gun regs/rights (take yer pick) is likely simply to skip past them.

I, for example, usually skip past.

But today a new thought hit: Guns are a simple answer to a tough problem.

I’m a good-government type of gal, but any leftist who isn’t at least skeptical of governmental power isn’t doing it right. I like big, messy, pluralist, complicated societies, and the only way to live well in a big, messy, pluralist, complicated societies is to establish some kind of rule of law to navigate those messes and complications. And if that law is to have a chance at approaching justice, good government is required.

But it’s also manifestly the case that government isn’t always good, that law falls short of justice, and sometimes you really do have to defend yourself by any means necessary.

Thus, while it’s easy for me to roll my eyes at so-called gun-nuts, there is some small part of me that gets some small part of their agenda. There’s a lot I don’t get and a lot I don’t agree with, but the notion that the government is not always to be trusted. . . ?

Anyway, trying to wrest good government out of bad is hard, hard work, rarely straightforward, and almost always takes too long. And even if you think you’ll fail, you have to believe enough in the worth of good government to try.

Not everyone believes this, of course, which is why some prefer the quick recourse to weaponry. But there may be others who are driven less by animus against the government (or the big messy society which requires it) than a frustration that the Right and the Good are just so goddamned obvious and just as goddamned obviously never to be achieved by standard operating procedures, that the best way to the Right and the Good is to blow a hole through those SOPs.

I’m tired and crabby and have grading and have to get up early to work the second job tomorrow and do I really want to write—more to the point, do you really want to read what I write—about guns?

What the hell.

My views about guns haven’t much shifted from where I landed a decade or so ago: I’m not crazy about them, don’t hate them, and if I lived out in the boonies I’d have a shotgun, if only to scare off any big critters trying to get at my little critters. And the next time I go back to Wisconsin I’d like to try trap shooting or target shooting with my hunting-rifle-owning brother and brother-in-law.

Except, of course, culturally they are so much more: Totems of freedom, penis-substitutes, toys for the uncivilized, power, markers of Real Americans, manly, gangster, and on and on and on.

That’s a big part of the problem, that instead of treating guns as dangerous tools, we polemicize them into ontological signifiers: To be or not to be, with guns.

Actually, that’s wrong: Most of us probably don’t polemicize them into ontological signifiers; most of us probably seem them as dangerous tools which it is okay to own and use in a properly regulated fashion. Go on and on about guns and you’ll be given the side-eye, but if you hunt or like to target shoot at the range, well, okay. And if you won’t buy your kid a Nerf gun because you think it promotes aggression, you might get an eye-roll, but, well, okay.

Honestly, I’m closer to the gun-control folks than the NRA (no kidding. . . ), but if you want to collect an armory in your basement in preparation for the apocalypse, well, it’s your dime.

There are a few steps you should have to follow, however: Every single person who owns a gun should have a background check, and perhaps should be licensed. Every single gun you own should be registered, and any gun you own which is not registered should be confiscated and you should pay a huge-ass fine for not registering it.

At the time of registration, you should have to take it to a licensed instructor and demonstrate that you know how to load, unload, fire, lock, and safely store the gun. And maybe when you fire the gun, the bullet should be collected and entered into one of the those nifty CSI-type databases.

(And for those, like me, concerned about civil liberties: Make the registration system dual key, i.e., the registrant is assigned a number, and that number is entered into the gun-owning database. In order to access the name behind the number, a search warrant would be required.)

If you sell your gun, you must file a transfer form with the gun registry. The new owner would then be required to file a preliminary registration application before the actual gun could be transferred. A background check would be performed in the interim, and once it comes back clean, the gun may be transferred, at which point the new owner would be required to complete the registration process. A reasonable fee—one which would cover the costs of the registry and the registration process—would be required.

If you sell your gun or give it away and don’t file a transfer form, if you lose it or it’s stole and you don’t inform the police, you would be open to large, large fines, and holds on any future firearms registration. If you are convicted of crimes which, if turned up in a background check would prevent you from owning a gun [for whatever period of time], you either have to surrender your guns to a licensed dealer for the duration of the n0-gun period, or you have to sell them. You’ll retain the right to petition the court for restoration of your gun rights, although further restrictions may be attached to them.

And tough laws for any crimes committed with guns? Yep, as well as laws for negligence, brandishing, and general stupidity. (For the latter I prefer those huge-ass fines, largely because I think we already lock up too many people, but short jail, as opposed to prison, terms might be warranted.)

States and localities will retain the right to impose further restrictions on ownership, and while I think concealed-carry laws are a menace, I don’t know that there’s any constitutional way for the federal government to override them.

The feds can and should ban certain types of weapons—as they already do with automatic weapons—as well as certain types of bullets. They might also retain the right to impose stricter licensing requirements for various types of weaponry.

Oh, and ban large-capacity magazines—anything over 10 bullets.

Others have mentioned insurance requirements for gun-owners, which some states might wish to implement or at least allow insurers to ask before offering home or life-insurance. Let the insurers add their own (reasonable) licensing requirements. Tax the shit out of bullets.

The upshot of all of this: Recognize the existence of the [current interpretation of the] Second Amendment which allows for both gun ownership and gun regulation, and go from there. Recognize in law the difference between a bolt-action hunting rifle and a semi-automatic handgun or rifle, and recognize in culture the line between use of guns for one’s own enjoyment and that based on anti-social contempt.

It’s not enough, of course, to stop the gun violence in both our streets and our homes, nor is it enough to stop suicides or, maddeningly and sadly, periodic massacres. I think we’d all be better off if there were fewer guns—especially handguns—in this country, and I’m offended by arguments that we can’t live with one another without guns.

But I also believe if things are to get better—if we’re to kill fewer of us—we need to start where we are, and where we are is in a gun-laden and gun-positive place. We need to start treating guns as dangerous tools, and maybe, just maybe, down the line that’s all they’ll be.

Have I mentioned recently my. . . delight? satisfaction? relief—yes, let’s go with relief—that I live in New York City?

That’s because I don’t have to worry about my governor or mayor suggesting that teachers lock-and-load prior to entering the classroom.

Is it really any surprise that Texas Governor Rick Perry or Virginia Gov Bob McDonnell muses that the appropriate response to gun violence on school ground would be to increase the number of guns on those same school grounds?

Kids steal anything that isn’t nailed down in my classroom. In this school year alone, I’ve “lost”: 2 staplers, 12 whiteboard markers, 1 globe, 1 map, 1 copy of The Color Purple, 3 boxes of staples, countless pens and pencils, an apple, my deskplate, and a years’ supply of tacks. If I yawned long enough, these kids would pluck the fillings right out of my mouth and this guy thinks I should have a GUN in the CLASSROOM? Where the fuck would I securely keep a gun? Because I’m sure as shit not packing one on my person. and even if teachers are allowed to carry guns, then what? We’re all supposed to take marksmanship classes to learn how to shoot the damn things? How is this anything but a cheap way of turning teachers into unsworn police officers?

No. No. No. Teachers teach. Police officers police. And legislators are supposed to legislate. Maybe instead of trying to add to the burden of my jobs, legislators should take a crack at doing theirs.

I’m not worried about my students—who are not kids—stealing from me, but I”m right there on the whole “teachers teach” bit: that’s what we do, that’s the whole point of us.

Imma gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that those who want teachers to pack heat probably don’t, really, respect us. As commenter Sly at Lawyers, Guns & Moneypointed out,

According to conservative orthodoxy, I’m a parasite on the public’s dime who is only interested in indoctrinating the precious children of America into communism or atheism or whatever. I can’t be trusted to have any control over the curriculum I teach. I can’t be trusted to fairly and impartially evaluate my students, let alone my colleagues. I can’t be trusted to have collective bargaining rights. I can’t be trusted to have an objective view of governmental policy when it comes to my own profession.

But they’ll trust me to keep a gun in a room filled with children.

Allow me to add to the rant by noting that not only do they not respect teachers, they don’t respect what we do. Maybe they don’t respect us because they don’t respect teaching, maybe they don’t respect teaching because it’s performed by, y’know, teachers—but whatever the arrows of causality, they don’t bother to understand the first goddamned thing about teaching.

And what is that first goddamned thing? Teaching is work. It’s fucking hard work to try to do well and, on some days, just to not do it poorly.

I just finished the last session of a course which had kicked my ass all semester. It was the first time I taught this course, and as often happens with a new course, all of those things which seemed like good ideas while preparing the syllabus turn out to be bad or unworkable ideas as the semester progressed. About halfway through it became clear that things were falling apart, and about two-thirds of the way through I’d figured out how I could improve things for next semester, but in the meantime I had to try to salvage what I could so that the class wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Do you know what it’s like to know that you’re failing—that you’ve failed–but the best you can do is to try to prevent the failure from bursting into flames and immolating what few nuggets you did manage to pass along? Yeah, it sucks.

I’m actually pretty fortunate in that most of the time, I’m jazzed rather than drained by what happens in the classroom, but either way, it’s work. I think about and prepare and rethink and revise and prepare some more, all so that my students can get something out of the course, which in turn means that I can get something out of teaching them.

But hey, if what I do doesn’t matter, then all of that time spent pretending as if it does could better be spent at the firing range doing the real work of shredding paper targets or at SWAT camp learning how to somersault through a hail of bullets and turn up rightside firing at my attacker(s).

I don’t know his politics. I don’t know his mental state. I don’t know his background, his personality, his history of drug or alcohol use, or his genetic profile.

I don’t even know that he killed six people and shot twelve others, although, given the evidence reported thus far, it appears likely.

It appears likely that Jared Loughner is an assassin.

But that’s just one piece of this murderous political puzzle, isn’t it? Some have examined his online postings and concluded that he was widely read or maybe just trying to impress people with works he couldn’t understand; one woman Tweeted that when she knew him he was left-wing; some speculate on the influence of the anti-semitic American Renaissance or conspiracist David Wynn Miller; Andrew Sprung labels him a “sui generis make-your-own reality psychotic”.

Many others have noticed have noticed that this occurred in a poisonous political atmosphere, wherein Senate candidates talk about “Second Amendment remedies” and elected members of Congress call President Obama an “enemy of humanity”.

And the half-guv, of course, has her part to play, both in refudiating any role her noxious metaphors may have contributed to that atmosphere, and to serve as a rally point for those who insist that no one even consider politicizing these killings.

Sticks and stones may break my bones/but words may never hurt me.

What rot, for in what other media do we perform politics but in words? Of course words matter!

You don’t need to delve into the ontological dimensions of the speech-act to grasp that this is the primary way we relate to one another—that our language itself is a marker of our species. We are not only linguistic creatures, but we would not be who we are without language. And we would not have politics without language, without words.

Of course words matter.

That’s not all that matters. Loughner was able to purchase a semi-automatic weapon (which would have been illegal under a law which expired in 2004) and carry it on his person, concealed, with no permit whatsoever.

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.

True—in this case, Jared Loughner used a semi-automatic gun to kill six people.

But Loughner was nuts, right? Suspended from school, scaring the hell out of his college classmates, a sui generis psychotic—can’t blame rhetoric and guns on this crazy man, could we?

I’m not trained in either psychology or psychiatry, and if I were, I hope I’d be disciplined enough not to diagnose someone I only read about in a newspaper. But I do have my own history of mental illness, and I do know how what I once called a “bad brew” of chemistry and history lead to acts of self-destruction great and small. I never tried to hurt anyone else, but it was very important to me that I hurt myself. And no, I didn’t consider myself crazy.

It made sense to me not only that I would kill myself, but that I should kill myself.

This decades-long belief didn’t come from nowhere: it came from the reactions of people around me to my erratic behavior, from romantic notions of the successful suicide, from my own constant intake of movies and books and television shows about depression and suicide, from The Thorn Birds (long story), and, of course, from my own depression and personality.

I was the one making the attempts, and I was the one who worked out the rather elaborate moral justification for my suicide, but I got help from the society around me.

No, society didn’t know it was helping me—I don’t blame society for my troubles—but it gave me the pieces I needed to construct a an overwhelming and destructive narrative of my life. It all made so much sense, then.

I don’t know what, if anything, makes sense to Jared Loughner. All I have are a very few inadequate pieces—violent rhetoric, weapon, possible mental illness—but enough to know that, even if this wasn’t a conspiracy, it certainly wasn’t sui generis, either.